Love, Calypso
by Vellichorous
Summary: Ever wondered what Calypso's point of view was like when Leo was marooned on her island? A Caleo fanfiction. Picture credit: Viria viria.
1. Chapter 1

**C** **ALYPSO ALMOST BROKE HER LOOM** **.**

The first explosion was muffled and quiet, as if it was far out to sea. The second one, however, shook her cave enough to shake a few crystals loose from the ceiling. Thankfully, the foundations of the cave were strong, so the damage was minimal. Other than the few crystals littering the floor, there was no harm.

The sturdy foundations didn't do her much good, unfortunately.

When she heard the second explosion and felt the tremor, she jerked in surprise, her leg connecting with the base of the loom and almost sending it toppling to the ground.

Now _that_ would've been a terrible way to start the day.

She quickly righted it and checked the damage done to the cloth she had been weaving. The entirety of the unfinished cloth had shifted down a few inches due to the rumble. In many places it had loosened, strands pulling away slightly as a gentle breeze blew them about. The end of her string had been shaken free from the cords of the loom, and trailed to the floor of the cave.

She sighed. The setback wasn't severe. Sure, it would take time, but it wasn't as if she was imprisoned on an island for the rest of eternity or anything.

Once she finished checking her cave for any other damage, fear started to snake its way into her. Whatever had caused the explosions, she wasn't really eager to find out.

She took a few tentative steps outside, into the early afternoon sunlight. Past her garden and over the copse of trees, a thick black plume of smoke was steadily rising.

Smoke? Ogygia was an enchanted island, shielded from the rest of the world. There'd be absolutely no reason for there to be smoke and explosions in the vicinity of her island. Unless…no. It couldn't be. It was much too soon, but her fear sank to the pit of her stomach as she followed the footpath through the trees closer to the source of the smoke.

Calypso kept walking, reaching the grassy hills where the trees started to thin out. The wind, a gentle breeze, blew toward her, and it carried with it the sound of a voice. She swallowed nervously and broke into a sprint, crossing the hills quickly and arriving at the beach. What she saw stopped her in her tracks.

Where her dining table had been, a huge crater gaped like the maw of some horrific monster. Pieces of dinnerware and table and chair lay strewn around the hole, either on fire or in the process of melting. As Calypso made her way to the edge of the crater and looked inside, a gasp escaped her lips.

It was easily eight feet deep, the sand at its edges and sides blackened by heat and soot. The wreckage of some strange contraption smoked and emitted weak sounds at the bottom.

But that wasn't what had made her gasp. Amid the ruins, seemingly oblivious to the smoke and heat, sat a boy.

He was clutching another alien object: a sphere seemingly made up of layers of circles, one on top of another. It was charred and smoking, with strands of bronze peeking out in between the circles.

Her heart sank. Her worst suspicions had been confirmed.

A new hero had arrived.

After the initial shock of seeing him, Calypso's fear started to turn into anger.

"What are you _doing_? You blew up my dining table!" she yelled. That table was no ordinary table. It was where…where her last hero had eaten his final dinner on her island.

The boy jumped, seemingly startled, and whilst still clutching his sphere, he slowly turned and looked up to face her.

He certainly didn't _look_ like a hero. Of course, Calypso had only met three heroes before him, but they'd all given off an aura of heroism. This one, well…he had an aura, all right, but it wasn't the same as the others. It was more of a nervous energy, demonstrated by his hands constantly moving, adjusting the tool belt around his waist or tinkering with the sphere he held in his hands. His dark eyes, too, although focused on her, seemed to want to break away and look at everything surrounding him. His hair was dark brown, a similar shade to his eyes, and curled all over the place, reflecting the nervous energy surrounding him. Judging from her view atop the edge of the crater, he seemed to be at about average height, not too tall and not too short. He was scrawny, with a thin face and build. His skin, tanned and sporting various scars, was mostly covered with soot. The clothes he

wore were covered with the stuff as well, but they were also smoking and charred in various areas.

All in all, he didn't really live up to Calypso's definition of _hero_.

After catching sight of her face, the boy's face darkened, and he scowled. She had a feeling he disliked her, but she honestly didn't care.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" he replied. "I just fell out of the sky. I constructed a helicopter in midair, burst into flames halfway down, crash-landed, and barely survived. But by all means—let's talk about your dining table!"

Anger flared up in her chest. The sarcasm in his voice was obvious enough, and was grating her nerves.

He looked around and snatched up a goblet, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it was melting and probably burning hot.

"Who puts a dining table on the beach where innocent demigods can crash into it?" he demanded. "Who _does_ that?"

Calypso's anger reached a breaking point. She could either punch the stupid boy or curse the gods. She picked the second option.

"REALLY?" she screamed, shaking her fist at the sky. "You want to make my curse even _worse_? Zeus! Hephaestus! Hermes! Have you no shame?"

"Uh…" the boy said. His dark look was gone, replaced with confusion. "I doubt they're listening. You know, with the whole split personality thing-"

Calypso wasn't listening. "Show yourself! It's not bad enough I am exiled? It's not bad enough you take away the few _good_ heroes I'm allowed to meet? You think it's funny to send me this—this charbroiled runt of a boy to ruin my tranquility? This is NOT FUNNY! Take him back!"

The boy flinched, and then called out from the crater: "Hey Sunshine. I'm right here, you know."

Calypso whirled around to face him. Sunshine? Did he just call her _Sunshine_? Oh, this boy, whoever he was, she was going to…no. She had to focus. She had to find a way to get him off of the island. He had to be a mistake. The gods couldn't possibly send someone the likes of him to her island…right?

In any case, step one was to get him out of the crater. "Do _not_ call me Sunshine!" she retorted. "Get out of that hole and come with me _now_ so I can get you off my island!"

"Well, since you asked so nicely…" he grumbled, and started to climb his way out onto the sand. When he got about halfway, Calypso spun and started walking down the shoreline.

She could hear the boy make his way out and then jog to catch up with her. Once he reached her, Calypso turned and flapped her hand at the wreckage. "This was a pristine beach! Look at it now."

"Yeah, my bad," he muttered. "I should've crashed on one of the other islands. Oh, wait—there aren't any!"

Calypso crossed her arms and scowled. His sarcasm seemed to be present whenever he talked, and it was really starting to annoy her. She couldn't wait until he was gone.

She turned and kept storming her way down the beach. She could hear him catching up again, but he kept his distance a few feet away from her. They walked like that in silence for a few minutes, until Calypso suddenly stopped. They had reached the place she was looking for: a smooth stretch of beach perfect for departure from the island on a raft.

The boy was apparently lost in thought or whatever scrawny soot-covered boys did, because once Calypso stopped, he kept walking

and promptly ran into her.

"Gah!" she exclaimed, and turned around.

She grabbed his arms to prevent him from falling. As she did, his body turned, and they were suddenly face to face, barely inches apart. His eyes, harboring resentment and a little bit of worry, were replaced with surprise, as her arms gripped his with a strength that was probably misleading in respect to her appearance. She guessed working in her garden for a few millennia gave her that unexpected strength. She smiled inwardly a little at the thought.

His eyes…something about them drew her. They seemed to pull her in, and she could sense something…and then in a flash, it was gone.

Calypso pulled him upright. From this close, he smelled like fire. There wasn't any other way she could describe it. Just raw, blazing fire, untamed and powerful. She shivered inwardly, hoping he wouldn't notice, and pushed him away. She shook off the weird feeling his eyes had given her and turned her attention back to the shore.

"All right," she said. "This spot is good. Now tell me you want to leave."

The boy stared at her. That confused look was back. "What?"

Exasperation flooded Calypso's veins. "Do you want to _leave_?"

He said "Uh…yeah. My friends are in trouble. I need to get back to my ship and—"

Calypso cut him off. "Fine. Just say _I want to leave Ogygia_."

"Uh, okay." She could see the hurt in his eyes, and felt a little twinge of regret. But she had to get him off of her island. Besides, he probably had somewhere to be, just like all of the past heroes had. "I want to leave—whatever you said."

"Oh-gee-gee-ah." Calypso pronounced it slowly, making sure he understood how to say it.

"I want to leave Oh-gee-gee-ah," he said.

She let out a deep breath she didn't know she'd been holding. "Good. In a moment, a magical raft will appear. It will take you wherever you want to go." Calypso felt another twinge of regret. She didn't really understand why. He did say that he had to save his friends. It was for the best, but still, she couldn't shake the tiny feeling of sadness she felt at the prospect of him leaving.

"Who _are_ you?" he asked. His face was still confused, with a mix of hurt and resentment. There was even a trace, so slight it was barely noticeable, of recognition.

Calypso had started to answer, but the recognition made her hesitate. If he knew anything about her legend already but just didn't recognize her for some reason, she didn't want to reveal herself. Her story was a cursed one, after all. Heroes already led difficult, painful lives. There was no need to make his life any worse by telling him her name.

"It doesn't matter," she said instead. "You'll be gone soon. You're obviously a mistake."

His face darkened. He tried to hide his reaction to her words, but Calypso caught it. She wondered what in his past made him react that way. Whatever the case, the raft would be here soon, and he would be gone. She pushed the thought aside.

"Any moment now…" she muttered. Looking out across the vast expanse of ocean, she saw no magical raft.

Her heart sank for the second time that day. A new record, she supposed.

"Maybe it got stuck in traffic," the boy said. Calypso could've really done _without_ his sarcasm right then.

"This is wrong." She glared at the sky. "This is completely wrong!"

"So…plan B?" he asked. "You got a phone, or—"

"Agh!" Calypso whirled around and marched toward the trees. Once she reached the path, she broke into a sprint and ran without stopping until she reached her garden.

She fell to her knees and picked up her trowel from off of the ground. All of her pent-up emotion from the day, she channeled into the gardening tool, and before long there was a small mountain of dirt by her knees, and a sizable hole in the patch of earth.

Calypso kept digging, displacing dirt like a madman, until her emotions overpowered her.

She started to cry.

Tears fell from her face and landed in the freshly turned earth, watering the soil with the sadness, anger, and annoyance that she could no longer contain.


	2. Chapter 2

**S** **HE HEARD A VOICE MUTTER** **"H** **OLY** **H** **EPHAESTUS** **"**

Calypso flinched and looked to the side. She had been so caught up in her furious troweling that she hadn't noticed the boy enter her garden. He was standing a medium distance from her, at the outskirts of the grove of trees between the hills and her garden.

He was staring in wonder, marveling at the carefully cultivated herbs, flowerbeds, and fruit trees. His eyes darted around like fish in a pond, glancing at the fountain with its bronze satyrs and looking at the neatly ordered rows of vegetables. Calypso could hear the sound of his smelling from where she knelt. She shuddered inwardly.

Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, she took the opportunity to wipe her eyes free of tears. Her eyes were probably still red and swollen, but Calypso really didn't want this boy to see her cry. She picked up her trowel and continued digging just as the boy started walking slowly in her direction.

Calypso cursed under her breath. Why, oh _why_ did the gods have to send her another hero so soon? She wasn't even finished getting over Percy. Especially since she had been promised freedom from her island but had been denied it, this new boy's arrival was even more painful.

How typical of the gods to go back on their word. Even oaths sworn on the River Styx they could break with little consequence. Some of the gods were kind to her, but for the most part, the Olympians were not that much better than the Titans. They were more like the lesser of two evils, not necessarily a better group.

Calypso couldn't shake an uneasy feeling he'd been having, however. Her curse did happen to be the unfortunate fall-in-love-with-every-hero-she-meets kind, so that meant that if the boy had been sent here, then she was destined to fall in love with him. She didn't see any possible way she fall in love with this poor excuse of a hero, but the Fates could certainly be unpredictable. And cruel. Very cruel.

She noticed that the boy had gotten within a few feet over her. Fighting the urge to look up at him, she kept digging even more furiously than before. Dirt started to fly in all directions, flecking her arms and clothing with specks of earth. She didn't care too much, though, since she was still using the trowel to channel her emotions.

He spoke up. "I think you've punished that dirt enough." His sarcasm was present, like always, but this time it wasn't as harsh and biting as earlier. It was gentler, probably because he saw her watery eyes and understood that she had been crying. So he wasn't a complete dunce.

"Just go away," she said, and kept digging away.

"You're crying," he replied. Well, wasn't that blindingly obvious. She took it back: he was a dunce.

"None of your business. It's a big island. Just…find your own place. Leave me alone," Calypso muttered. She pointed her trowel vaguely toward the south. "Go that way, maybe."

"So, no magic raft? No other way off the island?"

"Apparently not!"

"What am I supposed to do, then? Sit in the sand dunes until I die?"

Calypso sighed and tossed down her trowel. "That would be fine…except I suppose he _can't_ die here, can he?" She cursed the sky. "Zeus! This is not funny!"

The boy put up his hands. "Hold up. I'm going to need some more information here. You don't want me in your face, that's cool. I don't want to be here either. But I'm not going to go die in a corner. I have to get off this island. There's _got_ to be a way. Every problem has a fix."

Calypso laughed with bitter mirth. His naiveté was amusing to a degree. After living for over three thousand years, she knew better than that.

She voiced her thoughts: "You haven't lived very long, if you still believe that."

Surprise crossed his face, and Calypso grinned a little on the inside. He recovered quickly, however, and kept talking. "You said something about a curse."

She stood up and stretched her hands. All of that angry troweling had really taken its toll. "Yes. I cannot leave Ogygia. My father, Atlas, fought against the gods, and I supported him."

His eyes widened. "Atlas. As in the _Titan_ Atlas?"

Did he _have_ to be so surprised? She had already hinted at her age. That, plus her resentment to the gods and her curse, should have made it so that having a Titan as a father wasn't super surprising to him.

Calypso spoke in an exasperated tone. "Yes, you impossible little…" She stopped abruptly. Words could hurt, she knew. And although he was infuriatingly annoying, she didn't hate him. In a way, she felt sorry for him. Her curse was now a part of his fate as well as her own.

She continued: "I was imprisoned here, where I could cause the Olympians no trouble. About a year ago, after the Second Titan War, the gods vowed to forgive their enemies and offer amnesty. Supposedly Percy made them promise—"

He interrupted. "Percy. Percy Jackson?"

Calypso couldn't help it. A tear slid down her cheek.

 _Percy Jackson_. That name still hurt every time it was mentioned.

Odysseus had been clever and Drake had been ferocious. They were both great heroes in their own right. But Percy had been gentle. He was the one Calypso loved the most out of the three. He was the only hero that Calypso had promised herself not to offer the opportunity to stay. And he was the only one she had ever cursed for leaving her alone.

Yes…she had cursed him. More specifically, she had cursed his girlfriend Annabeth, who had been the main reason why

Percy had had to leave. Calypso had regretted it later, though it was too late to take back the curse. In the moment of Percy's departure, she had been so bitter, so full of sadness and anger, that she couldn't help but curse Annabeth for taking Percy away. It was pretty immature for someone who'd lived over three thousand years, admittedly. But only having company every thousand years or so made it difficult to let them go.

The boy seemed to realize that the name he had said was significant. "Percy came here," he guessed.

"I—I thought I would be released. I dared to hope…but I am still here." Calypso gripped the dirt with her fingers in frustration.

He was silent, and Calypso had a feeling he was beginning to figure out who exactly she was.

"You're that lady," he said finally. "The one who was named after Caribbean music."

"Caribbean music." What on earth was _Caribbean_ music? Whatever it was, she didn't really think of it as a good thing to be named after.

"Yeah. Reggae?" he shook his head. "Merengue? Hold on, I'll get it." He muttered a few more names under his breath before finally alighting on the right one. "Calypso!"

 _So he does know_ , Calypso thought to herself. _Incoming heartbreak_.

The boy continued talking. "But Percy said you were awesome. He said you were all sweet and helpful, not, um…"

Percy had mentioned her? She felt a mix of pain and happiness at the thought.

"Yes?" she responded.

"Uh, nothing," he said nervously. Calypso was sure he had been about to make some rude observations on her behavior.

"Would you be _sweet_ ," she demanded, "if the gods forgot their promise to let you go? Would you be sweet if they _laughed_ at you by sending another hero, but a hero who looked like—like _you_?"

"Is that a trick question?" Great. More sarcasm. Just what she needed.

" _Di Immortales!_ " she shouted and stormed into her cave. She heard him call after her and give chase, but she just kept on marching away.

Once she reached the washbasin, she looked at the entrance of the cave to see if he had followed her. He had, but he was entranced, gawking at the crystal walls and invisible wind spirits cleaning up the place.

Calypso dipped her arms into the warm water, wiping off the dirt from her troweling fury. The amount of dirt that had built up on her arms was surprising. She had to learn to control her emotions better.

The boy snapped out of his trance and turned his attention back towards her. He cleared his throat and spoke up, but in a much nicer tone than before. "So…I get why you're angry. You probably never want to see another demigod again. I guess that didn't sit right when, uh, Percy left you—"

"He was only the latest," Calypso muttered. She didn't

mention exactly how recent Percy was. It was still too painful to think about. "Before him, it was that pirate Drake. And before him, Odysseus. They were all the same! The gods send me the greatest heroes, the ones I cannot help but…"

"You fall in love with them," he guessed. "And then they leave you."

Huh. So he had figured out her curse. She hadn't been expecting that.

"That is my curse," Calypso said, tears threatening to fall again. "I had hoped to be free of it by now, but here I am, still stuck on Ogygia after three thousand years."

The shock on his face amused her slightly. "Three thousand." He didn't speak for a few moments, allowing the true nature of her age sink in. "Uh, you look good for three thousand."

Was he complimenting her? That was a first. Interesting.

Calypso responded with scathing words. "And now…the worst insult of all. The gods mock me by sending _you_."

His expression darkened. Calypso guessed that he probably had some self-esteem issues, or a past filled with feeling inferior. Her curiosity tugged at her, wanting to know more about this strange boy. But she pushed the thought aside. If she was to make this whole ordeal as least painful as possible, she didn't want to give herself any reason to feel for him.

"Fine," he said after a stretch of silence. "I'll leave you alone. I'll build something myself and get off this stupid island without your help."

There was his naïve thought process again. A pang of sadness,

more for him than for herself, shot through her as she said "You don't understand, do you? The gods are laughing at both of us. If the raft will not appear, that means they've closed Ogygia. You're stuck here the same as me. You can never leave."


	3. Chapter 3

**H** **IS NAME WAS** **L** **EO.** **L** **EO** **V** **ALDEZ.**

He had been stunned after Calypso had told him that he would never be able to leave. After the initial shock, though, he had regained his composure and talked with her a little more. He had told her his name then.

And now Leo was off defying his fate, trying to find ways off of the island. He set up camp at the beach, sleeping under the stars on a bed he fashioned out of cloths he pulled from that tool belt of his. The first night, he had shivered from the cold, so he built fires from the remains of her dining table to keep warm. He probably had some satisfaction, too, from burning something belonging to Calypso.

Well, this one had attitude.

She kept an eye on him from time to time. During the days, Leo wandered the island, walking to the farthest edges of her island. Having explored the entire island herself multiple times (she _had_ been here for millennia, after all), she knew he would find nothing to help him escape. The magical raft was the only way off the island. All of this searching and exploring was futile, but Leo kept on. He even tried to use Iris-messages to contact his friends, but the metal objects he summoned from his belt obviously didn't work. Even if he did have the proper drachmas to use as an offering, Calypso knew they wouldn't work. The gods, sadly, had been very careful when designing her prison. The island was too strongly protected by their enchantments to allow any kind of unauthorized magical communication through.

At night, Leo was a sound sleeper. Calypso had that to be thankful for, at least. She didn't need another reason to add to her list of "Things She Hates about Leo". That list was long enough as it was.

She noticed that his nervous energy transferred over in his sleep. Even while slumbering, Leo's fingers were twitching, as if they were assembling some invisible device. They reminded Calypso of her own hands whenever they wove on a loom, and she was fascinated. She pushed the thought away, however. Sharing characteristics with Leo wasn't exactly on her to-do list.

One day he approached Calypso while she was working in her garden, walking towards her slowly and carefully as to not surprise her.

She looked up at him. "Why are you here?"

"Trust me, I don't want to be here any more than you want me to be here. I know you don't want to see me ever again, and I'm totally fine with that," Leo replied.

"Then what do you want?"

"I just had a question to ask. That's it, and I'll be out of your hair."

"Out of my hair?" Calypso asked, confused.

Leo sighed. "Never mid, it's just an expression. Forget I said anything."

A smile tugged at the edge of Calypso's mouth, but she kept it from showing. "As you wish. So, what is your question?"

"How long have I been here? I can't keep track of the days since every day here on your island is the same. They kind of all blend together and I can't remember how long it's been."

Calypso looked down and shook her head. "Time is difficult here," she said.

"Define difficult."

She sighed and stood up to face him. "After Kronos was defeated—wait, you do know about the Second Titan War, right?"

"Uh, yeah, kind of. Per…I mean, my friends back on my ship mentioned it. Kronos came to power again and he was defeated and blah blah blah. Keep going."

Calypso knew Leo had been about to say Percy, and she tried to keep her emotions in check. "Yes, that was the Second Titan War. In any case, after Kronos was defeated, and after I was supposedly _promised amnesty—_ " she yelled those last words at the ceiling "—Hephaestus came to visit me. He told me of the war and of…of Percy's adventures." She inwardly berated herself for stumbling over that name. "He told me that in the real world, Percy had taken two weeks to return from my island. But here, on this island, it only felt like a week. Even then, I could not remember exactly. He might have been here for a month, or he might've been here for only a few days."

Leo held up his hands. "Hold up. My _dad_ came to visit you?"

"If you mean Hephaestus, then yes, he came to visit me," Calypso said. "He does every so often. I should've known you were his son, with your strange contraptions and such."

"Yeah, well…" Leo shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. "He doesn't really act like a father most of the time. He even confessed to me once that he isn't good with organic life forms." He looked up at her. "Anyway, moral of the story is that time works differently here than in the real world, right?"

"Yes, it would seem to work that way," Calypso replied. Over the course of the conversation, the hard edge in her voice had slipped away. She put the curtness back into her voice and said "Now, if that's all you needed to know, then you can leave."

Leo straightened up. "Yeah, wouldn't want to be here any more than necessary, of course." He turned and walked away, leaving Calypso alone with her gardening implements. She sighed and went back to her gardening. Her shears were getting dull, making it harder to cut the vines threatening her crops, so she focused on the task for the rest of the day, and the conversation she just had with Leo quickly left her mind.

Calypso wasn't completely heartless. She took pity on Leo and sent him food and drink so he wouldn't starve to death. She left them at the edge of the tree line, a few hundred feet from where Leo slept. She also weaved him new clothes, since the clothes he wore before had been badly burned in his explosive entrance to her island. Using her loom and a bit of magic in her singing, she made a couple new sets of clothes that were his size and left them along with the food near his sleeping area. They were simple cotton, made from the same material as her curtains, so it was easy enough to make the clothes.

One day, Calypso was washing pots and pans in her basin when Leo poked his head into her cave. He came unannounced and suddenly this time, all carefulness forgotten. "Hey, I just wanted to say thanks—"

Calypso shrieked and reflexively threw the nearest object at him, which happened to be a soapy pot. Leo's eyes widened and he dived

out of the cave to avoid the projectile aimed at his head.

Overcoming her initial surprise, Calypso walked over to the entrance of the cave. She bent over to pick up the pot, which had fallen next to the curtain covering part of the entrance. Even though she no longer harbored hate for Leo, she wasn't fully accustomed to his presence here on the island. Coming into her cave like that had certainly been a surprise.

When she straightened, she caught sight of Leo walking away, scratching his head. Calypso heard him mutter something that sounded like _crazy girl_ under his breath. She couldn't help but smile a little. Then Leo abruptly stopped walking and looked up.

He was staring at her fountain, the circle of bronze satyrs arranged around the marble bowl. One of the satyrs was turned sideways and was shaking up and down. The stream of water from the statue shot far past the bowl and onto the footpath leading away from her garden. A faint ticking sound came from the base of the statue. Calypso frowned. She could've sworn that the fountain had been perfectly fine a few minutes ago.

After a moment of hesitation, Leo started to pull a few tools out of his belt and made his way over to the satyr. He climbed up onto the rim of the marble bowl and started to work.

Calypso watched in fascination. His hands moved with dexterity that she could barely follow, and the tools he was holding were silver blurs. In almost no time at all, the satyr was facing the bowl again, standing completely still, and spouting water properly like its brethren.

Satisfied, Leo stepped down from the rim of the bowl. He turned, and Calypso quickly hid behind the curtain of the entrance. Through the thin material, she could make out Leo's silhouette in the afternoon sun. He seemed to be looking in her direction.

Leo walked over to the entrance of the cave. Peeking in, more carefully this time, he scanned the cave for Calypso. Not seeing her anywhere inside and failing to spot her behind the curtain, he walked over a few steps until he was standing on the other side of the curtain from Calypso. She didn't think he knew she was there, but he was close enough that she could reach out and touch him if she wanted to. Not that she wanted to, of course.

He pulled out a dark object from his belt. Calypso heard a click, and then object sprang into a miniature ladder. Leo placed it on the ground and climbed up onto it. He pulled out another object, this one unfamiliar to Calypso. It started to make a loud whirring sound, and Leo held it up to the crystal wall that one end of the curtain rod was attached to. Calypso looked up, and saw that the tool seemed to be carving a notch into the crystal face. After a minute or so, Leo turned off the device and grabbed ahold of the rod. Pulling down, he moved it until it clicked into place in the new notch he had made in the wall. Leo dusted his hands, climbed down from his ladder, collapsed it, and started to walk away.

Calypso inspected his work. The curtain rod was now perfectly level. She never even noticed that it had been crooked. It was probably due to Leo's explosion, now that she thought about it. She smiled a little to herself.

Looking outside, Calypso saw that Leo still hadn't yet left her garden. He was squatting down next to her gardening tools, where she had left them. For the third time that day, Leo whipped out some tools from his belt and got to work. The dull shears that had been giving her trouble were sharpened. Her pruner hinges were oiled. Even her bent trowel (probably due to the furious troweling on day one) was crafted back into perfect shape. No flaw evaded his skilled hands and tools. His repairs took less than five minutes.

Seemingly oblivious to Calypso watching him from the entrance of the cave, Leo packed up his tools and walked away, whistling.

 _How many things can you fix in a day, Leo Valdez_ , Calypso wondered to herself. She smiled again.

Calypso continued to check up on Leo from time to time. Well, check up on was the wrong word. Monitored was more close to the truth. She never actually approached him or talked to him. Rather, she watched him from the cover of the trees for a considerable amount of time each day. Not in a creepy way: she just observed. Leo did know, of course.

He had moved from his bed of cloths to a more permanent residence—a lean-to made of sticks and cloth—near the footpath, where the beach met the hills. It was still relatively far from Calypso's cave, and she guessed he stayed away due to her pot throwing.

Leo also implemented some additions to his camp. He dug a campfire pit to keep himself warm (at least he was no longer burning Calypso's table. Or what was left of it, at least) and used driftwood and branches to fashion a bench and a worktable. He spent hours on that sphere of his, cleaning it and adding wires and doing other things Calypso didn't understand. And sometimes, Leo just sat out on the sandy shore, leaning back on his arms, and staring in silence across the blue expanse of the ocean. Calypso knew that he was thinking about his friends back in the real world, and she felt a pang of sadness for him. She knew what it was like to be alone. She had millennia of experience in that particular field, after all. Calypso had never known friends, though. She only knew heartbreakers, people she couldn't help but love hopelessly. Her loneliness wasn't exactly the same as Leo's, but it was close enough that she could relate to what he was feeling.

Over the course of Leo's first few days at Ogygia, Calypso's animosity toward him faded somewhat. He was bearable to a degree, but she still didn't completely like him. Then one day, everything changed.

Calypso was picking grapes from her vineyard and gathering them

into a basket when she heard a distant _clang_ , like a hammer hitting metal. Curious, she stood up and looked in the direction of the sound. It came from the direction of the small stream that ran through the grove of cedars and into the hills. Dusting off her hands, Calypso walked over to the trees to see what had caused the noise.

She reached the hills and had almost made it to the brook when Leo suddenly appeared from the direction of the stream. He was walking in Calypso's direction, though he didn't see her. Startled, she shrank back behind the nearest tree, hiding herself in the shadows, and watched.

As he grew closer, Calypso noticed that he was lugging sheets of bronze behind him. Balanced precariously on top of them were a few wires and some wheel-looking objects, also bronze.

Where on earth did he find metal on my island, Calypso wondered. And then she saw it.

Leo was smiling.

Calypso had seen smiles before. The one in most recent memory was Percy's. His was kind and gentle, but not terribly unique.

Leo's, however, was in a completely different universe. His grin stretched from ear to ear, displaying his brilliantly white teeth. It curved up a bit more on the left side of his face, giving him a devilish, mischievous look. His eyes gleamed with intensity, matched only by the power she had seen in her father's eyes so long ago.

Calypso was entranced. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't take her eyes off of Leo's face. She finally managed to snap out of her trance and shrank back into the shadows of the trees just when Leo was about to pass her hiding place. With her back pressed up against a tree, Calypso waited as Leo slowly dragged his plates away. She could hear him whistling a merry tune, until he finally crossed the hills and disappeared.

She let out a huge breath that she didn't know she had been holding and fell to her knees. What _happened_? This wasn't like anything Calypso had ever felt before. All she knew was that she absolutely _had_ to see him smile again. That simple expression of emotion had brightened up her existence, as if she had been living in shadow up until that very moment. The world seemed a bit duller now that she had seen that smile.

Her emotions were a complete mess. Calypso had no idea how to name what she was feeling. But slowly, it started to dawn on her. It couldn't possibly be…love? No, surely not. She hated Leo…well, that's what she thought, at least. But deep, deep inside of her, in a place where even she herself rarely ventured, Calypso knew the answer.

She had fallen for Leo. How the gods would be laughing right now. The Fates were cruel indeed, sending her another hero so soon, especially one Calypso had been sure she'd never love. Yet here she was, slowly started to admit to herself that she had in fact fallen for Leo.

The battle inside of her raged on. Calypso's mind fought her heart for control of her emotions. Her mind dreaded the inevitable pain that came with every hero. But her heart could not wait to see Leo's smile again. Her heart won, of course. It always did.

With his newfound supplies, Leo quickly went to work improving his campsite. Over the course of the next few days, Calypso watched as he built a forge out of mud bricks, lugged rocks over to use as anvils, and melted nails from his belt into a solid plate for hammering.

After he completed his improvements, Leo started to work with his bronze scraps and sheets, melting them and forming them into new shapes. Wires, toothed wheels and other objects Calypso couldn't name were produced from Leo's deft hands and tools. He worked tirelessly day after day, and collapsed into a tired heap onto his makeshift bed night after night.

On one of these days, Calypso finally worked up the nerve to visit Leo. Ever since first witnessing his smile, she was fearful, not of Leo, but what he could do to her. She couldn't lose control like that, not again.

She didn't show this, obviously. Instead of displaying her internal conflict (in which love was dominating her denial) she kept up the act of annoyance towards Leo's presence. She brought a basket of food with her so she had a valid reason to visit.

Calypso walked up to Leo busily whacking away at his anvil. He didn't look up and kept his attention on his hammering.

"Smoke and fire," she complained, almost yelling so she could be heard over the din. "Clanging on metal all day long. You're scaring away the birds!"

Leo stopped his hammer midswing. "Oh, no, not the birds!" he retorted without looking up. He resumed, the sound of metal on metal once more ringing out across the hills.

"What do you hope to accomplish?" Calypso asked.

Leo finally met her gaze, and his eyes widened a little, though Calypso didn't know why. His now-unattended hammer fell onto the anvil, barely missing his exposed thumb. She stifled a giggle, and suppressed another one as Leo's stomach chose that exact moment to let out a huge rumble.

He ignored his hammer and stomach. "I'm _hoping_ to get off this island," Leo said. "That is what you want, right?"

 _The answer to that used to be yes, but now I'm not so sure_ , Calypso thought. She put the basket of food she was holding onto the floor near his bed. "You haven't eaten in two days," she said sternly. "Take a break and _eat_."

"Two days?" Leo was bewildered. He looked down at his tools, and then back up again. "Thanks," he said in a small voice. "I'll, uh, try to hammer more quietly."

"Huh," Calypso grumbled. She turned and walked away. Looking back, she saw that Leo was back to his metalworking, albeit a tiny bit quieter.

Her heart wailed with disappointment, but her mind breathed in relief. _No pain for today at least_ , it seemed to say to her. Calypso sighed and kept walking.

The moment she entered her cave, Calypso collapsed onto the nearest bed. Her heart and mind were still locked in conflict. Tears welled up in her eyes without warning, and it took Calypso all of her willpower to drive them away. What was _wrong_ with her? She hadn't felt like this since…well, ever. Her inner turmoil was a thousand times worse than the other times heroes had come to her island. How and why was Leo making her feel this way?

Calypso grabbed a pillow and smothered her face. She let out a soundless scream, releasing some of the pent-up emotions that whirled like a hurricane inside of her. She started to curse everything: Leo, the gods, Leo, the Fates, LEO, her stupid curse, LEO VALDEZ—Calypso almost started to actually scream.

After what felt like a few eternities, she slid the pillow off of her face and took a deep breath. She was feeling much better now, after letting go of all that emotion. Her heart and mind were quiet too, for the time being. Calypso rose from the bed and pulled her loom from the corner to the center of the cave. She dragged over a stool that was leaning against a wall and sat down. Her deft hands quickly wove and threaded string until a white square of cloth formed on the loom.

She started to sing, quietly at first and then slowly raising in volume. The plaintive words flowed from her mouth onto the loom. She sang of memories, of things long gone but never forgotten, of reminiscing, and of loss.

The cloth began to glow.

Calypso paused to take a breath. She spoke: "Show me Leo

Valdez."

The cloth shimmered, strings of light dancing around within it. And gradually, an image formed on the surface of the weaving: a curly-haired baby in the arms of a beautiful woman. She was singing softly in a language Calypso didn't understand. With the smooth lull of her words and the gentle rocking of her arms, the woman slowly put the baby to sleep. He had a content look on his face, a familiar smile dancing around the edges of his tiny mouth.

The woman looked down at the now-sleeping child and smiled warmly. "That's right, _mijo_. Sleep. Dream of happy things. Dream of your father, maybe…"

Tears welled up in her eyes, but she quickly blinked them away. She stood up and, being careful not to wake him, placed the baby in a nearby crib. Taking one last glance and giving one more warm smile, she turned and left the room, closing the door behind her.

The baby fidgeted, trying to find a more comfortable position. After a few moments, he was calm, once again in the clutches of sleep. His tiny mouth parted, and Calypso could hear the soft, sweet sound of breathing, the kind that only babies could make.

Calypso smiled. Leo sure had been a cute baby. Too bad he would grow into that skinny excuse for a boy, she thought to herself, and smiled. She started to sing again, and the image on the loom began to change.

It was the dawn of a new day when Calypso finally let the magic go. The cloth lost its luster and glow, and the beams of light dancing in the threads faded away, replaced with the warm rays of the morning sun.

Calypso leaned back a little in her stool and let out a huge breath. So this was the life of Leo Valdez. She had only skimmed the surface, but she was already overwhelmed with the knowledge she now held. She knew some of his pain and suffering, and the life-changing events that happened in his life.

She also knew that his favorite color was red. Completely irrelevant, but oh well.

She felt connected to him. She felt a need to care for him. All of a sudden, her inner conflict subsided a little. Her mind still grumbled about the pain that was going to come, but it did grudgingly agree that helping him was a somewhat good idea. And right then, Calypso did have an idea.

She tried to stand but immediately sat back down. Her muscles were stiff from sitting still for so long. She must've been sitting for hours, staring at the weaving. Groaning in discomfort, Calypso forced her aching muscles to cooperate, and she stood up. She shambled over to the wall of the cave, pulled out some weaving materials, and sat down once more to work.

As her hands went to work again, she sang another song. This time, it was a song of protection. It spoke of the loving embrace of a mother, and how it could make everything in the world seem better. It told tales of great heroes who gave much, sometimes even their lives, to safeguard those they loved. All this, Calypso sang of, and the magic sank into the threads of her weaving.

It was around early to mid-morning when Calypso finished. She wiped sweat off of her forehead and inspected her handiwork.

The outfit she had seen in Leo's past now lay before her. There was an army jacket with about a billion pockets, along with a simple white T-shirt and a pair of jeans. The jeans were a strange new piece of clothing. She'd have to check it out later. All in all, though, Calypso was pleased.

 _I'll give them to him tomorrow_ , she thought to herself, and without another word, she collapsed onto her bed and went to sleep.

She woke to the familiar sound of clanging in the distance. _Still at work, I see_ , Calypso thought.

She covered her mouth and yawned, then got up and stretched out her sore muscles. Maybe sitting still for hours and then weaving for hours without any breaks hadn't been a good idea. Oh well. Nothing she could do about it now.

Outside, the sun shone brightly with its afternoon rays. Had she slept so little? Or was it a new day, and she had slept for over twenty-four hours? It didn't really matter. Time worked differently here anyway.

 _So he likes red_ , Calypso couldn't help but think as she went over to the wall of her cave. She changed into one of her red dresses, but resisted the temptation to see how she looked. _I'm not wearing red for him_ , she thought, but she knew deep down that she was just lying to herself. Sighing (that seemed to be a habit these days), she picked up the new clothes she had woven for Leo and exited the cave.

As she grew closer to his camp, the clanging grew louder. When she reached the edge of the trees, the sound abruptly stopped.

Calypso paused, wondering if Leo had seen her. Peeking out from around a tree, she saw that he had his back turned to her. He had put down his hammer and was now tinkering with some bronze bits and pieces. Careful not to scare him, Calypso tiptoed until she was standing behind him. She said softly, "I brought you—"

Leo flinched in surprise, his hands dropping the bronze onto his worktable. "Bronze bulls, girl!" he exclaimed as he spun around to face her. "Don't sneak up on me like that!"

Well, that worked like a charm.

"I wasn't _sneaking_ ," Calypso retorted. "I was bringing you these." She held out the clothes she had folded on her arm.

Leo's eyes widened until they were almost full circles. He slowly reached out and gingerly touched the clothes. His normally energetic hands were calm for a change, fingers gently tracing lines on the jacket, as if it was familiar.

He looked up, and Calypso met his bewildered gaze. "How?" he asked.

"I do have a little magic, you know," she said with satisfaction as she placed the clothes at his feet. "You keep burning through the clothes I give you, so I thought I would weave something less flammable."

"These won't burn?" He sounded even more bewildered than before.

Calypso allowed herself a small smirk. "They are completely fireproof," she promised. "They'll stay clean and expand to fit you, should you ever become less scrawny."

Leo looked down at the new clothes. "Thanks," he said, and Calypso didn't detect a single trace of sarcasm in voice. "So…you made an exact replica of my favorite outfit. Did you, like, Google me or something?"

"I don't know that word."

"You looked me up," he answered. "Almost like you had some interest in me."

Was she that easy to figure out? "I have an interest in not making you a new set of clothes every other day," Calypso grumbled, trying to keep her face from reddening. "I have an interest in your not smelling so bad and walking around my island in smoldering rags."

"Oh, yeah." Leo grinned. "You're really warming up to me."

His casual smile hit Calypso full force. She guessed that her face was probably blushing. "You are the most insufferable person I have ever met!" she yelled. "I was only returning a favor. You fixed my fountain."

He laughed. It was a clear, pleasant sound, unlike his other sarcasm-laden ones. "That? That was no big deal. I don't like it when things don't work right."

No big deal? Calypso probably would've taken years to fix the fountain, or asked Hephaestus to fix it the next time he came to visit. Like father, like son, she supposed. Except she couldn't quite imagine Leo with a beard.

"And the curtains across the cave entrance?" Calypso asked.

"The rod wasn't level."

"And my gardening tools?"

"Look, I just sharpened the shears. Cutting vines with a dull blade is dangerous. And the pruners needed to be oiled at the hinge, and—"

"Oh, yeah," Calypso said, cutting him off. "You're really warming up to me."

Leo froze, and his mouth hung slightly open from disbelief. For once, he didn't have sarcastic comments to retort with.

Since he was apparently incapable of speech at that moment, Calypso took the opportunity to take a look around. On Leo's worktable sat a mirror of sorts, with wires extending from the base and edges to the strange sphere Leo was so fond of. A few miscellaneous parts were lying around on the table.

She pointed at the mirror device. "What are you building?"

"Oh," Leo said, shaking himself out of his daze. He looked over at the bronze mirror and immediately took a step back. "Uh, it's a seeing device." His eyes went back to the mirror and studied his reflection. He grimaced. "We found one like this in Rome, in the workshop of Archimedes. If I can make it work, maybe I can find out what's going on with my friends."

Calypso shook her head. "That's impossible. This island is hidden, cut off from the world by strong magic. Time doesn't even flow the same here."

"Well, you've got to have some kind of outside contact," Leo thought aloud. "How did you find out that I used to wear an army jacket?"

 _I kinda sorta maybe delved into your past_ , Calypso thought. "Seeing the past is simple magic. Seeing the present or the future—that is not."

Leo rubbed his hands together in anticipation. "Yeah, well, watch and learn, Sunshine. I just connect these last two wires, and—"

The moment he touched the two wires together, sparks flew. A plume of smoke rose from the sphere, and the sleeve of Leo's shirt burst into flame.

Letting out a yelp of surprise, he quickly pulled off his shirt and flung it to the ground. Calypso covered her mouth with her hand to suppress her laughter as she watched Leo furiously stomp out the flames.

He looked up at her. They both knew what she was doing. "Not a word," he warned, his eyes glinting.

Calypso sneaked a glance. His chest and torso were just as scrawny, bony, and scarred as the rest of him. Sweat covered most of his upper body, giving it a shiny appearance in the afternoon sun.

"Nothing worth commenting on," she promised. _At the very least, it's not_ unattractive, she thought. "If you want that device to work, perhaps you should try a musical invocation."

Leo scoffed and slipped his tattered shirt back on. "Right. Whenever an engine malfunctions, I like to tap-dance around it. Works every time." He did a little jig to prove his point.

Calypso ignored him, took a deep breath, and started to sing. Through her half-closed eyes, she saw Leo freeze and turn to stare at her.

She sang of her memories of the world outside. After millennia stranded here, those memories were the only thing she had left from her old life. She sang of her home with her family, of the games she used to play, the fields and meadows she used to run through—all of these memories, she poured into her voice and sang.

Tears welled up in her eyes after she finished, but she blinked them away. "Any luck?" she asked.

Leo was still staring, the same bewildered look from earlier plastered over his face. At the sound of her voice, he flinched and snapped out of his stupor. He finally managed to take his eyes off of her.

"Uh…nothing," he said uncertainly. Looking back at the mirror, his eyes flashed. "Wait…"

The air above the mirror shimmered to life, forming images of the world outside.

Leo's breath caught sharply in his throat. Calypso looked over his shoulder to see what was going on.

There was a beautiful green valley, dotted with a variety of cabins. A few looked like Greek temples, others belched smoke or boasted barbed wire, and one even seemed to be made of pure gold. The cabins were arranged sort of in a U-shape, with offshoots from arm. A large blue house stood off to the side, a weather vane on the top spinning wildly. But that wasn't what had made Leo's breath catch.

Lines of warriors in various levels of armor were forming on the grass. A well-muscled brown-haired girl was bellowing orders, and a few other warriors were going down the line, passing out various pieces of armor and weapons. A centaur, in full battle gear, was inspecting the lines of troops.

Greek triremes patrolled the ocean beyond the cabins. A number of catapults were being prepared at the tops of the hills. Satyrs armed with branches and clubs guarded the fields next to the house, and pegasi flew through the air, riders on their backs.

Leo looked grim.

"Your friends?" Calypso asked.

He nodded. "They're preparing for war," he said in a small voice.

"Against whom?"

"Look." Leo pointed.

The image in the air changed. The scene of battle preparations was replaced with the impressive sight of an entire block of Roman soldiers, with gleaming gold armor, prickling javelins and interlocked shields. They marched in silence under the moonlight, the only sound coming from the synchronized rise and fall of their boots on the soft earth.

In the distance stood a sign illuminated by lights. Calypso couldn't completely make out the words that were painted on it, but next to her, Leo's breath caught again.

"I've seen that sign before," he said, worry filling his voice. "That's not far from Camp Half-Blood."

Suddenly the perfect formation of warriors broke into complete chaos. They bumped into each other, swinging their javelins like they were trying to ward off a swarm of bees. The wall of shields fell to ruin as the Romans desperately tried to defend themselves from the unseen onslaught.

Leo grinned, and Calypso's heart nearly jumped out of her chest. He pointed and said "Those beautiful little troublemakers! They kept their promise."

Flashing in between the soldiers and among the ranks, almost faster than Calypso's eyes could follow, were a pair of tiny men, covered with equal parts red hair and terrible fashion. She could hear gleeful laughter ring out as the pair went around stealing anything shiny: belt buckles, weapons, javelin heads, even some pieces of armor.

Calypso leaned in closer, fascinated. "Cousins of yours?" she said with a smirk.

Leo nudged her with his elbow. "Ha, ha, ha, no. Couple of dwarfs I met in Bologna. I sent them to slow down the Romans, and they're doing it."

"But for how long?" she asked him.

Leo was silent for a moment, and the scene in the mirror shifted. A tall, blond, very skinny demigod wearing white robes stood holding a towering canvas-wrapped pole. He was surrounded by other demigods and some sleek black…cars, Calypso remembered from Hephaestus's visits. As she watched, the blond demigod pulled off the canvas with a flourish, revealing an eagle made of pure gold. It shone with brilliance.

"Oh, that's not good," Leo said with dread.

"A Roman standard," Calypso noted. She'd seen a couple before, many years ago.

"Yeah," Leo confirmed. "And this one shoots lightning, according to Percy."

 _Him again_. Calypso wished there could be some sort of warning before his name was mentioned, so she would have more time to brace herself for the flood of emotions that always came.

She tried to keep her emotions, but she was too late. As soon as Leo said the name, he turned to look at her. He must've seen the hurt in her eyes, because his knuckles tightened and his face darkened.

Why was he so angry? He couldn't be jealous. But if it wasn't jealousy, then Calypso had no idea.

Leo quickly looked away and turned his attention back to the images. They had changed again, and this time Calypso saw a lone demigod, flying through a swirling tempest on the back of a light-brown pegasus. Her dark hair fluttered, and her cloak flew about her like an angry purple wind. Calypso could see the glint of armor underneath her swirling cloak.

She obviously wasn't faring too well. Numerous cuts and bruises adorned her arms and face, blood welling from some of the scrapes. Her pegasus wasn't doing any better. He also had various wounds all over his body, and he was frothing at the mouth as a result of the hard riding. Despite all this, the girl and her mount continued, battling their way through the storm.

The clouds above her broke, and a gryphon swooped down. It slashed the pegasus's flanks, and the pegasus reared back and almost tossed the girl into the storm. She held on, however, and with a single deft stroke she slashed the monster into oblivion.

Her respite didn't last, however. Almost immediately, a trio a wind spirits— _venti_ , Calypso thought—descended from the clouds and circled the demigod. Bellowing a challenge, the girl charged, sword poised to strike.

Just when her sword connected with the first wind spirit, the mirror flickered and went dark.

"No!" Leo yelled, and Calypso jumped in surprise. "No, not now. Show me what happens!" He beat his fists on the mirror, to no avail. "Calypso, can you sing again or something?"

Resentment rose in her chest. Who was this girl, and why was she apparently so important to Leo? Her mind knew she was being childish, but like always, her heart took over.

Calypso glared at him. "I suppose that is your girlfriend? Your Penelope? Your Elizabeth? Your Annabeth?" She couldn't stop the wave of bitterness and jealousy from entering her voice. Of course, when she finally came around to falling for Leo, another girl had to enter the picture. Typical Fate behavior.

Her words didn't seem to register with Leo. "What?" Then understanding dawned on his face. "That's Reyna. She's not my girlfriend! I need to see more! I need—"

 _NEED,_ said a voice that seemed to come from the ground itself. It rumbled, shaking the ground underneath Calypso's feet. She stumbled and tried to keep her balance.

 _NEED is an overused word,_ the voice said again, and the swirling figure of a woman appeared on the beach. Sand swirled around her, giving her the appearance of a dust devil. It was Gaea herself.

Leo pulled a tool from his built and hurled it at the goddess. It passed right through and sunk into the sand beyond.

 _You want to live,_ Gaea said. Her face displayed a slight smile, even though her eyes were closed. _You want to join your friends. But you do not_ need _this, my poor boy. It would make no difference. Your friends will die, regardless._

Calypso watched the encounter intently. Leo was shaking with rage, hands twitching and summoning random metal bits from his belt, as if they were going to construct some device to blow the goddess away.

"What I _don't_ need," he growled, "is more lies from you, Dirt Face. You told me my great-granddad died in the 1960s. Wrong! You told me I couldn't save my friends in Rome. Wrong! You told me a lot of things."

The goddess laughed softly, and the sand around her feet shivered.

 _I tried to help you make better choices,_ she murmured. _You could have saved yourself. But you defied me at every step. You built your ship. You joined that foolish quest. Now you are trapped here, helpless, while the mortal world dies_

Calypso watched as Leo's twitching hands burst into flame, fire engulfing his fingers. The flames reflected in his eyes, giving him a manic look.

She quietly crept up to Leo, and right before he arched his hand back to blast Gaea's form to pieces, she placed her hand on his shoulder and gently pulled back.

"Gaea." She spoke with all the authority she could muster, which was quite a lot, considering that they were on _her_ island. She took a few steps until she was standing next to Leo, and she dropped her hand from his shoulder. "You are not welcome."

 _Ah, Calypso._ Gaea sighed her name. _Still here, I see, despite the gods' promises. Why do you think that is, my dear grandchild? Are the Olympians being spiteful, leaving you with no company except this undergrown fool? Or have they simply forgotten you, because you are not worth their time?_

Calypso didn't respond. She looked past Gaea's swirling figure and out into the vast sea. The questions Gaea had asked were things Calypso had thought about in her many years here with no company. She did resent the gods for her terrible curse. The Fates were indeed cruel for sending her the most painful of heroes, ones she could not help but love.

 _Yes,_ Gaea whispered, as if she knew what Calypso was thinking. _The Olympians are faithless. They do not give second chances. Why do you hold out hope? You supported your father, Atlas, in his great war. You knew that the gods must be destroyed. Why do you hesitate now? I offer you a chance that Zeus would never give you._

Why was she hesitating? The Olympians rarely did good things for her, and never considered her release. They had denied her the amnesty she was promised, after all. That had made her a thousand times more resentful.

Yet she knew, deep within her soul, why she hesitated. For she knew that no matter how cruel the gods could be, they were more benevolent than the Titans. Compared to the giants, the Olympians were kind and generous. If Gaea ruled, her children the giants were sure to rule. And a world ruled by those monsters was not one she wanted to live in, no matter the reward Gaea offered.

And there was also Leo. Calypso knew that she would have to hurt him if she listened to Gaea, and she couldn't do that. Both her mind and her heart agreed (for once) that hurting Leo was something she could never bring herself to do.

"Where were you these last three thousand years?" Calypso finally said. "If you are so concerned with my fate, why do you visit me only now?"

Gaea turned up her palms. _The earth is slow to wake. War comes in its own time. But do not think it will pass you by on Ogygia. When I remake the world, this prison will be destroyed as well._

"Ogygia destroyed?" Calypso shook her head. That was impossible. The island she lived on couldn't possibly be destroyed just like that. It didn't make sense to her.

 _You do not have to be here when that happens,_ Gaea promised. _Join me now. Kill this boy. Spill his blood upon the earth, and help me to wake. I will free you and grant you any wish. Freedom. Revenge against the gods. Even a prize. Would you still have the demigod Percy Jackson? I will spare him for you. I will raise him from Tartarus. He will be yours to punish or to love, as you choose. Only kill this trespassing boy. Show your loyalty._

Calypso saw Leo flinch out of the corner of her eye. _He thinks I might actually do it_ , Calypso thought. She couldn't blame him. She did act pretty abrasive to him, after all. But past all of that, towards Leo, she would never actually hurt him. And killing him would definitely fall under the category of hurting Leo.

But Percy…Calypso recalled all of the lonely days that had followed his departure. She had cried herself to sleep every night for a while, and the mere mention of his name brought tears to her eyes. She could have him back, forever.

Deep in her heart, though, she knew that it wouldn't be the same. He had Annabeth, after all. He had a place in the world. Calypso couldn't be a part of his normal life anymore. Besides, she had Leo now. If Leo truly didn't have a girl waiting for him back home, well—there was a chance for Calypso's shattered heart to be put back together once and for all.

She made up her mind. Making the ward against evil, Calypso said, "This is not just my prison, Grandmother. It is my home. And _you_ are the trespasser."

She raised her arms, and as she did, the wind picked up speed, from a slight whisper to a whirling gale. It tore at Gaea's form, and soon her image was ripped away into nothingness. The ground stopped rumbling. All was quiet.

She turned to look at Leo. He returned her gaze nervously, his fear meeting her anger.

After a few moments, he cleared his throat and said, "Uh, don't take this the wrong way, but you didn't kill me. Are you crazy?"

"Your friends must need you, or else Gaea would not ask for your death." Calypso's anger started to fade, and the taut muscles in her body relaxed.

"I—uh, yeah. I guess." Leo still looked stunned from the turn of events.

"Then we have work to do," Calypso said. "We must get you back to your ship."


	4. Chapter 4

**C** **ALYPSO WAS GLAD TO HAVE SOMETHING TO DO.**

Almost immediately after Gaea's visit, she had started to make preparations for Leo's departure. Food, water, medicine just in case—these all went into a neat pile near Leo's camp. She set to work on a sail, and made rope for the rigging of the ship that was to be made. All this took her less than a day, and before long she found herself with nothing left to do.

Calypso woke up to the sun's morning light and stretched. Letting out a small yawn, she turned and looked outside. She could see the thin pillar of smoke above the treetops, telling her that Leo was still hard at work. She smiled. He never seemed to sleep anymore, after Gaea's appearance on the island. Maybe the earth goddess scared him more than he let on. Or maybe he was just determined to leave as quickly as possible. It was probably a combination of the two.

Calypso stepped outside and basked in the warm rays for a few moments, then walked over to Leo's camp. On the way, she heard the strange whirring and clinking sounds that his tools often made.

"Do you need help with anything?" she asked Leo once he was within earshot.

He looked up from the mess of bronze on his worktable and flashed his trademark smile. Calypso's heart skipped a beat.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were anxious to get rid of me," he said.

Calypso shrugged. "That's a bonus," she replied. She noticed that Leo was looking at her with a strange expression.

"Why the jeans and the T-shirt?" he commented, pointing out her wardrobe change.

"Oh, this." So that's what he'd been staring at. "Well, did you expect me to work in a dress?"

"Well, no," he admitted. "But I didn't expect you to wear jeans and a T-shirt either."

Calypso smirked. "So what did you expect me to wear, if not a dress or jeans?"

He threw up his hands into the air. "I don't know. Just not that, I guess."

"Well, to answer your question, I'm wearing these because I realized how much more practical these clothes are for working than dresses. Also, the jeans are new to me so I wanted to try them out."

"That doesn't explain why your shirt is so dirty, though," Leo replied with a grin.

"Picking fruits and vegetables, which are for you, I might add, isn't exactly the world's cleanest thing to do, now, is it?" she retorted. "Unless you would rather I didn't collect all that food for you?"

Leo held up his hands again. "Okay, Sunshine. You win."

He was still looking at her with that strange expression on his face. An awkward silence followed, until Calypso finally spoke up.

"So?" she asked.

He jumped a tiny bit. "So…what?"

"So how can I help?" She motioned toward at the jumble of bronze on the table. "How is it coming?"

"Oh, uh," he said, and looked down at the table. "I'm good here, I guess. If I can wire this thing up to the boat, I should be able to navigate back to the world."

"Now all you need is a boat." So this was it, then. Leo really was going to leave. She felt a strange sensation she couldn't quite explain.

She would miss him, of course. Under normal circumstances she would deny it, but Calypso was done lying to herself. His endless clanging, his smile, and…yes, his sarcasm. She'd miss it all. Leo had become a regular part of her life in the days that he spent here, and it would be strange to have him go. He still needed a boat before leaving, but it was only a matter of time. Soon, he would be gone.

Leo must've seen something in her face, because he cleared his throat and spoke up. "What Gaea said…" He paused for a second. "About you getting off this island. Would you want to try it?"

It sounded a bit too good to be true. "What do you mean?"

"Well…I'm not saying it would be fun having you along, always complaining and glaring at me and stuff," he said quickly. "But I suppose I could stand it, if you wanted to try."

Calypso couldn't help but smile just a little.

"How noble," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "But no, Leo. If I tried to come with you, your tiny chance of escape would be no chance at all. The gods have placed ancient magic on this island to keep me here. A hero can leave. I cannot." She sighed. "The most important thing is getting you free so you can stop Gaea. Not that I care what happens to you," she added hastily. "But the world's fate is at stake."

"Why would you care about that?" he asked. "I mean, after being away from the world for so long?"

Calypso thought for a second. "I suppose I don't like being told what to do—by Gaea or anyone else," she said after a few moments. "As much as I hate the gods sometimes, over the past three millennia I've come to see that they're better than the Titans. They're _definitely_ better than the giants. At least the gods kept in touch. Hermes has always been kind to me. And your father, Hephaestus, has often visited. He is a good person."

Leo's mouth had dropped at the mention of his father. She gently reached out and closed it. Her fingers lingered on his face. They stared at each other until Calypso broke the silence.

"Now," she said firmly, and dropped her hand. "How can I help?"

"Oh." Leo was startled by the sudden sound of her voice. "You know that flameproof cloth? You think you could make me a little bag of that fabric? It shouldn't be too big, enough to hold an apple, maybe."

"That will only take minutes. Will it help you on your quest?"

"Yeah it might save a life," he said. After a slight pause, he continued. "And, um, could you chip off a little piece of crystal from your cave? I don't need much."

Calypso frowned. "That's an odd request."

"Humor me."

She nodded. "Alright. Consider it done. I'll make the fireproof pouch tonight at the loom, when I've cleaned up. But what can I do now, while my hands are dirty?" She held them up for Leo to see. They were covered in grime and blistered in places.

Leo grinned. Again, her heart skipped a beat.

"Well, you could twist some more bronze coils," he said after some thought. "But that's kind of specialized—" He abruptly stopped talking as Calypso pushed him to one side of the bench, sat down, and starting to braid the bronze.

"Just like weaving," she said, looping and twisting coil after coil. "This isn't so hard." She felt a wave of satisfaction as Leo's jaw dropped in surprise.

"Huh," he said. "Well, if you ever get off this island and want a job, let me know. You're not a total klutz."

"A job, eh?" Calypso said with a smile, her hands still working the bronze into shape. "Making things in your forge?"

Leo shook his head. "Nah, we could start our own shop. Leo and Calypso's Garage: Auto Repair and Mechanical Monsters."

She put the bronze down. Auto repairs and mechanical monsters?. That sounded much better than living for the rest of time on an island with a stupid curse.

"Fresh fruits and vegetables," she added with a smile.

"Cider and stew," he shot back. "We could even provide entertainment. You could sing and I could, like, randomly burst into flames."

Calypso laughed, surprising herself. It had been a long time since she had actually laughed.

Seeing her laugh made Leo chuckle a bit, too. "See, I'm funny," he said.

She cut herself off and forced herself to look serious. That made Leo laugh again, which made not smiling even harder for Calypso. "You are _not_ funny," she said sternly. "Now get back to work, or no cider and stew."

"Yes, ma'am," he answered, and gave her a mock salute. Calypso picked up her bronze and Leo his tools, and together they went to work. It was silent, but neither of them could keep from smiling.

Two nights later, Leo's project was finished.

He called it a "guidance console". Once he connected it to a ship, it would guide him back to the world. Or so he claimed.

Leo and Calypso celebrated the completion with a picnic on the beach. The crater Leo made when he arrived sat not too far away from where they sat. They ate under the silvery rays of the full moon, and lit a campfire, its orange tongues throwing dancing shadows across the ground.

The supplies for Leo's journey were all prepared in a neat pile near his camp. Rope, a sail, food and water were all there.

"All we need now is a boat," Calypso said, her tone light. In reality, she was feeling uneasy. When Leo had first arrived, she couldn't wait until he was gone. Now that he was almost ready to leave, she felt a wave of sadness. How things had changed from that first day.

"I can start chopping wood into boards tomorrow," Leo said. "Few days, we'll have enough for a small hull."

"You've made a ship before," Calypso recalled. "Your _Argo II_."

He nodded. His eyes got a faraway look.

"So how long until you sail?" she asked. Calypso couldn't bring herself to look him in the eyes while she said this. It pained her.

Leo thought for a moment, fingers twitching as they always did. "Uh, not sure," he said. "Another week?"

Calypso almost sighed in relief. So he had a few more days here before he left. Seeing as how time on the island passed in strange ways, he would probably seem to leave much earlier, but she was glad to have some more time with him nonetheless.

She looked down at the circuit board that lay on the picnic blanket. It gleamed in the moonlight, its many edges and facets glittering like stars. The light of the fire cast dark shapes across the surface. "This took so long to make," she said.

Leo shrugged and gave her a small smile. "You can't rush perfection."

Calypso let a smile dance around the edges of her lips. "Yes, but will it work?" she asked, almost accusingly.

He waved his hand nonchalantly. "Getting out, no problem. But to get back I'll need Festus and—"

 _"What?"_ Had she heard him right?

"Festus. My bronze dragon." He blinked in surprise at her sudden outburst. "Once I figure out how to rebuild him, I'll—"

Calypso cut him off. "You told me about Festus. But what do you mean _get back_?"

Leo scratched his head nervously and half-smiled. "Well, to get back here, duh," he said carefully. I'm sure I said that."

"You most definitely did not." His words rang in her head. _Get back here_ …there was no way he could come back. It wasn't possible.

"I'm not gonna leave you here!" Leo exclaimed. "After you helped me and everything? Of course I'm coming back. Once I rebuild Festus, he'll be able to handle an improved guidance system. There's this astrolabe that I, uh…" He hesitated. "…that I found in Bologna. Anyway, I think with that crystal you gave me—"

Calypso cut him off again. "You can't come back."

His face fell. "Because I'm not welcome?"

"Because you _can't_ ," she insisted. "It's impossible. No man ever finds Ogygia twice. That is the rule."

Leo rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, you might've noticed I'm not good at following rules. I'm coming back here with my dragon, and we'll spring you. Take you wherever you want to go. It's only fair."

"Fair…" Calypso spoke barely above a whisper. She lost the meaning of that word long ago, when she was imprisoned here. It wasn't fair when she stood up for her father and was punished, wasn't fair that she had to fall in love with every hero who came to her island, wasn't fair that all of her heroes had to return to the world and break her heart. None of that was _fair_. Yet it happened, and look where so-called fairness left her. On an island, for the rest of eternity, with a curse that broke her heart on some days and left her completely alone on the rest.

Leo's voice brought her back to the present. "You didn't really think I could start Leo and Calypso's Auto Repair without Calypso, did you?" he asked her gently. "I can't make cider and stew, and I _sure_ can't sing."

Calypso stared at the sand and didn't speak.

"Well, anyway," Leo continued, "tomorrow I'll start on the lumber. And in a few days…" He stopped talking abruptly.

She looked up from the sand. Silhouetted by the silver gleam of the moon, to her unbelieving eyes, was a large wooden raft, floating in the gentle waves.

Calypso was the first to move. Her mind took over, and she sprang to her feet and made a beeline for the stacked supplies.

"Hurry!" she yelled over her shoulder. Leo was still sitting in a daze. "I don't know how long it will stay!"

"But…" He rose unsteadily. "That's the magic raft?"

"Duh!" she said without breaking stride. Calypso snatched up a few bags of food and almost threw them onto the raft. "It _might_ work like it's supposed to and take you where you want to go. But we can't be sure. The island's magic is obviously unstable. You must rig up your guidance device to navigate."

She finished placing most of the supplies onto the raft and headed back to the picnic blanket. The guidance console was still there, gleaming. Calypso picked it up, which finally got Leo moving, and together they ran to the ship and wired the circuit board onto the raft's rudder. They pulled the sail and rope from the beach onto the ship and starting working on rigging up the sail.

In almost no time at all, the raft was ready to go. Already the sail was fluttering with the wind. Leo tinkered with his sphere and muttered something under his breath, and the console on the rudder came to life.

The raft shuddered, and the ropes pulled the sail to catch the full force of the wind. Soon the raft began to move along the sand, reaching for the waves.

They faced each other on the shifting raft, the immortal and the hero. Only a few feet separated them.

"Go," Calypso said.

Leo's eyes held hers, with the same intensity she noticed before, along with an underlying sense of sadness.

He looked around. "The raft finally got here."

"You just noticed?" For a son of Hephaestus, he could be really dumb sometimes.

"But if it only shows up for guys you like—"

"Don't push your luck, Leo Valdez," she said. "I _still_ hate you."

"Okay." He started to turn around but Calypso kept talking.

"And you are _not_ coming back here," she insisted. "So don't give me any empty promises"

Leo turned back. "How about a _full_ promise?" he said. "Because I'm definitely—"

Calypso couldn't take it anymore. He was standing so close. She could smell the soot and fire from here, and for the first time she realized how much she would actually miss him and his sarcasm and his smile and his clanging and everything else she had come to know.

So before she had a chance to rethink what she was about to do, she leaned forward on her tiptoes, pulled his face to hers, and kissed him.

Leo stiffened in shock, and after a moment Calypso let him go. She pushed him away. "That didn't happen."

"Okay." He was still frozen in place.

"Get out of here."

"Okay."

She forced herself to turn away before she could say anything else. So this was it, then. He really was leaving. Tears welled up in her eyes but she wiped them away furiously as she walked away from the raft.

Her lips still tingled from the kiss.

The scrape of wood against sand made her turn around again. Calypso watched the raft caught the wind in its sails and slid off of the shore.

She saw Leo scramble around, aligning his guidance console and trying to keep the craft stabilized. The wind was strong, and before too long the raft was far out into the open sea. The Celestial bronze console glimmered in the moonlight, its glint growing fainter and fainter as the ship receded. Calypso thought she could see Leo turn his head back to the island, but soon even his outline, along with the raft, turned into a dark smudge on the horizon. A few moments later, it sailed over the edge of the earth, and the horizon was once again an unbroken line separating the heavens and the earth. Leo was gone.


	5. Chapter 5

**T** **HE DAYS DRAGGED ON, NEVER SEEMING TO END.**

Without the constant clanging or the smell of smoke in the air, Calypso's life seemed so empty. Weaving no longer brought her as much joy, and gardening only brought back the memories of Leo fixing her tools. Almost everywhere she went, she could sense traces of him lingering, from the craters on the beach to the drag marks in the forest where he had found the bronze. It was like she could never escape the memory of him, which made her life all the more painful.

His camp and the picnic blanket where he had eaten his last meal remained untouched. They just served as even more reminders of him, but she left them alone. She couldn't bring herself to clean up after him.

She spent most of her time sleeping. Only in her sleep could she escape from the memories of him. But her body could only sleep for so long, and eventually it would force her awake and make her face the real world again.

It didn't help that the days passed so slowly, either.

None of the other heroes had left her feeling like this. She let them go after a while, resigning herself to her fate. But she couldn't let go of Leo, no matter how hard she tried. He did leave a lot behind for her to remember him by, but still. He was a hero and a part of her curse, just like the others. Then again, the other heroes had never promised to come back to rescue her…

She still couldn't fully believe that Leo might come back. It was impossible, after all. A hero, no matter how strong, didn't stand a chance against the ancient magic of the gods. Besides, hoping for something that would never happen would just destroy her even more. But she couldn't help but hold onto that faint hope that maybe, just maybe, he was actually going to come back for her. That was the last thing she thought about before going to sleep every night.

The ground rumbled violently, shaking Calypso awake. Crystals shook loose from the walls of her cave, and a couple of the objects along the wall fell to the floor.

Alarmed, she rose and unsteadily made her way outside. If it was another hero, she swore she was going to find the Fates and punch them each of those wrinkly hags in the face.

What she saw, though, made her wish that it was another hero.

In the light of the sun, she saw that the dirt of her garden was shifting and swirling, forming the image of Gaea's face. Her eyes were open. The Earth Mother was awake.

Calypso realized that the rumbling was the goddess's deep laughter. It was a low, guttural sound, reverberating through the insides of Calypso's body.

The eyes of the earth goddess turned to look at her. "You should've killed the boy when you had the chance, my dear granddaughter," she said. Gaea's voice was no longer just a whisper, but a full, powerful voice worthy of Mother Nature herself. "Killing him then would've saved him from the painful death I am about to give him."

"No…" Calypso whispered. She was awestruck, and terrified, of the true form of Gaea. The Earth Mother had been asleep for thousands of years, and now she was awake. As clever as Leo was, she couldn't see how he'd possibly defeat _this_.

"Oh, yes. He and his little hero friends have caused me too much trouble, more than I thought was possible from mere demigods. But that is about to change. I will put an end to their miserable lives, and crush their Roman and Greek friends. All will perish, and I will rule my domain once more!"

She let out another laugh, sending ripples of earth out in all directions. And abruptly, the rumbling ceased. Gaea's face melted away, and the shifting earth settled. It was silent.

Calypso fell to her knees in the soft earth. Gaea was headed to Leo and his friends, who were most likely at the camp already, preparing for war. They didn't stand a chance against the might of the Earth Mother.

She felt tears well up in her eyes, but she refused to cry. She had cried enough times in the last few weeks, and she wasn't about to do it again. She had to hope, had to believe, that he could win.

Standing up in the rays of the sun, she closed her eyes and hoped with everything she had that the heroes could win and defeat Gaea. She made herself believe that somehow, they would end Gaea and return the world to normal.

A feeling of calm settled over her as she stood there in the sun, hoping.

And, she thought to herself, if she was going to believe something as crazy as some demigods defeating the goddess who created the world, well—she could definitely believe that a certain scrawny smart-mouthed hero was coming back for her.

She went back to bed with a slight smile on her face.

The next day she started packing.

A long time ago, Hephaestus had come on one of his visits. He had brought her a pair of suitcases.

"What are these for?" she had asked, inspecting the strange leather boxes.

"Calypso, my dear," he had replied, "nothing lasts forever. Even curses. Those suitcases are for packing and carrying your possessions when you go places that aren't home. And who knows? Maybe someday, you'll need them." And with that, he had winked and departed. It was as if Hephaestus had known all along that someone would rescue her. One of his own sons, no less.

It didn't take long to pack. For all of her years on the island, she didn't exactly have special possessions. Most of her clothes and a few other things went into the suitcases, and before long she was done packing.

She set the suitcases off to the side of her cave. The only thing she regretted not being able to take with her was her loom. Aside from gardening, weaving had been one of her very few solaces on the island. It would be hard to leave it behind, but Calypso was fine with leaving it if it meant her freedom.

Walking out to the beach, she stretched out her arms and closed her eyes, feeling the cool breeze dance across her skin and the sunlight warming her face. She heard the birds chirping and singing in the trees. She laughed, the sound flowing out across the sand. Gaea had scared away the birds, but they had returned.

Calypso called out to them, responding to their songs with her own singing. A few fluttered down and alighted on her outstretched arm. She could name them all—parrots, doves, lorikeets, mockingbirds. They chittered in reply to her voice, forming a pleasant mix of birdsong. She smiled. Happiness refused to merely remain in her body. She had to laugh, had to smile, had to sing. The last time she had felt this way was—well, she couldn't remember.

But she was happy. So, unbelievably happy.

And suddenly, a voice cut through the birdsong. A voice she knew too well.

"YEAH! WHO DIED? WHO CAME BACK? WHO'S YOUR FREAKIN' SUPERSIZED McSHIZZLE NOW, BABY? Woooooooo!"

The birds fled, but Calypso remained where she stood and looked up. Far up in the sky, breaking through the distant bank of clouds, a gleam of bronze broke through the white expanse and plummeted to the ground. As it grew closer, Calypso could see that the gleam was actually a huge dragon, with glowing red eyes. It didn't look to be in the best shape. As it continued its free fall to her island, she noticed that one of its giant wings was peppered with holes, and the entire bottom of the dragon was blackened.

He was riding on the back of the beast, curly hair whipping around his face as he fell.

As they neared, dragon and rider, the dragon spread its wings and slowed its descent. It apparently wasn't enough, however, and it crashed a bit too fast into the sand only twenty or so feet away from her. It leaned suddenly to the side, and the rider was pitched off, flying through the air until he landed with a soft _thump_ face-first into the sand at her feet.

He didn't quite top his first entrance.

Leo spat out a piece of kelp and some sand and looked up. Calypso looked down at him and raised her eyebrows.

"You're late," she said simply.

"Sorry, Sunshine," he replied easily. "Traffic was murder." He flashed her a quick grin, making her heart leap.

"You are covered with soot," she noticed. "And you managed to ruin the clothes I made for you, which were impossible to ruin."

Leo shrugged. "Well, you know," he said. "I'm all about doing the impossible."

Calypso reached down. He took her hand and she pulled him up.

There they stood, face to face. She studied his appearance. He looked just like he did when he had been here, albeit a bit more…burned. And he smelled terrible, like the soot had been absorbed into his skin.

She wrinkled her nose. "You smell—"

"I know. Like I've been dead." He shrugged again, like dying was no big deal. "Probably because I have been. _Oath to keep with a final breath_ and all, but I'm better now—"

Calypso leaned forward on her tiptoes and kissed him, pulling his face to hers.

He stiffened in surprise, but he relaxed. Slowly he wrapped his arms around her and they stood together in the silence.

She finally let go after what seemed like an eternity. She probably had soot smudges on her face, but she was beyond caring.

"Leo Valdez," she said simply, and nothing else. She traced his cheek with her thumb, wiping away a bit of the soot.

"That's me." He cleared his throat and continued. "So, um…you want to get off this island?"

Calypso took a step back and raised her hand. Her wind servants immediately rushed to her, carrying her two suitcases. "What gave you that idea?"

"Packed for a long trip, huh?" He grinned.

"I don't plan on coming back." Calypso looked over her shoulder to take one last look. The longing she expected wasn't there. She was ready to leave.

She turned back to face him. "Where will you take me, Leo?"

He thought for a moment. "Somewhere to fix my dragon, first," he said eventually. "And then…wherever you want." He glanced around the island. "How long was I gone, seriously?"

Calypso shook her head. "Time is difficult on Ogygyia," she answered. "It felt like forever."

Worry flashed across his face, and Calypso knew he was thinking about his friends. She suddenly realized that she had no idea what had happened to him. But that could wait.

He glanced back at her, and his anxious face eased.

"So once you leave Ogygia, do you stay immortal or what?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I have no idea."

"And you're okay with that?"

"More than okay."

"Well, then!" He clapped his hands together and turned to his dragon. "Buddy, you up for another flight to nowhere in particular?"

The dragon—his name was Festus, Calypso remembered—limped around and blew fire from its nostrils, which must have meant yes, because Leo grinned. She would never tire of that smile.

"So we take off with no plan," she said. "No idea where we'll go or what problems await beyond this island. Many questions and no tidy answers?"

Leo held his hands up. "That's how I fly, Sunshine. May I take your bags?"

"Absolutely."

Five minutes later, with Calypso's arms around his waist, Leo spurred Festus into flight. The bronze dragon spread his wings, and they soared into the unknown.


End file.
